Yesterday afternoon, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed a redacted motion of evidence from Special Council Jack Smith in the federal January 6th case against Donald Trump. The documents detail all of the ways in which Trump and his MAGA Republican allies attempted to knowingly subvert our democracy and overthrow the 2020 election, including the attempted coup at the US Capitol on January 6th.
With the 2024 presidential election only a month away, Trump, JD Vance, and MAGA Republicans have been sowing doubt in our elections, whipping up supporters and employing the same dangerous tactics they did before, during, and after the 2020 election. They continue to repeat the same lies and violent rhetoric that led to the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol to overturn the results of an election Trump knew he lost. They are prepared to do the same thing if things don’t go his way this November.
COMMENTARY
Neil Cavuto, Fox News: “It was in this newly unsealed court paper we’re learning that former President Trump resorted to crime in a bid to cling to power after the 2020 election.”
Rachel Maddow, MSNBC: ““This happens right on the heels – within 24 hours – of JD Vance rolling out among the most shameless, smooth-talking revisionist history about what Donald Trump did on January 6 and what happened at the end of the 2020 election…this shows that that revisionist history is absolute bunk. […] This proves that the case against him, the criminal case against him, is very very strong and very detailed.”
Andrew Weissmann, MSNBC: “This is bombshell, after bombshell, after bombshell…The reason this (Jack Smith’s filing) is public is because Judge Chutkan denied Donald Trump’s motion that he was making opposing this ever being anything we could ever see.”
Thom Hartmann, The New Republic: “[A]s the Trump candidacy proves, when Republicans’ crimes are not outed and punished, those Republicans simply come back and keep on criming.”
Aaron Blake, The Washington Post: “‘Make them riot.’ ‘So what?’ ‘The details don’t matter.’ The most striking findings in the big new Jack Smith filing on Trump’s 2020 election plot →”
Kyle Cheney, Politico: “Jack Smith says Trump made knowingly false claims about election fraud in 2020. Trump, responding to the new filing, makes knowingly false claims about why this document was released today. (It was filed on Sept. 26 and unsealed by Judge Chutkan — not DOJ — today)”
Kyle Cheney, Politico: “NEW DETAILS FROM JACK SMITH
1) A Trump campaign employee and alleged coconspirator sought to foment chaos at the TCF ballot processing center in Detroit.
2) Pence told Trump he saw no evidence of outcome-determinative fruad. They had MANY conversations, some detailed in Pence’s book, which prosecutors cite.
3) Smith says he plans to prove at trial that Trump and his alies made up claims about noncitizen voters out of whole cloth.
4) Trump repeatedly promised to “package up” and provide evidence to Gov. Ducey, Gov. Kemp and Rusty Bowers re: election fraud but never did.”
Karen Piper, The University of Missouri: “Jack Smith reveals that Trump planned to declare victory before the ballots were even counted in 2020. This is what Roger Stone advised him to do. […] You have to wonder how many of these people will end up in prison. The corruption is absolutely blatant and evil. It’s like a mafia indictment.”
Seth Abramson, Professor: “I am reading the 165-page filing from Jack Smith right now. It is utterly damning. It is unthinkable that the defendant in this case, who has done the things described here, could ever again even stand for president, let alone be elected. He should be deemed disqualified.”
HEADLINES
AP News: Prosecutors Lay Out New Evidence In Trump Election Case And Accuse Him Of Having ‘Resorted To Crimes’.
- “Donald Trump laid the groundwork to try to overturn the 2020 election even before he lost, knowingly pushed false claims of voter fraud and ‘resorted to crimes’ in his failed bid to cling to power, according to a court filing unsealed Wednesday that offers new evidence from the landmark criminal case against the former president.”
- “The filing from special counsel Jack Smith’s team offers the most comprehensive view to date of what prosecutors intend to prove if the case charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the election reaches trial. Although a months-long congressional investigation and the indictment itself have chronicled in stark detail Trump’s efforts to undo the election, the filing cites previously unknown accounts offered by Trump’s closest aides to paint a portrait of an ‘increasingly desperate’ president who, while losing his grip on the White House, ‘used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process.’’
Axios: Trump “Resorted To Crimes” To Try To Keep Power In 2020, Jack Smith Alleges.
- “Smith also accused Trump of knowing ‘his fraud claims were false because he continued to make those claims even after his close advisors—acting not in an official capacity but in a private or campaign-related capacity—told him they were not true.’ ‘At one point long after the defendant had begun spreading false fraud claims, a White House staffer traveling with [Trump], overheard him tell family members that ‘it doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell,’’ Smith wrote. Smith also outlined numerous instances of Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence telling Trump that there was no evidence of fraud.”
Mother Jones: Jack Smith Makes Damning New Allegations About January 6.
- “The filing presents new evidence that Trump knew his election fraud claims were false but proceeded anyway with a scheme to use so-called fake electors and outside pressure to stop Joe Biden’s electoral victory from being made official. Smith’s motion contains previously unreported information on Trump’s effort to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to illegally refuse to certify the election results on January 6, 2021.”
- “The document directly faults Trump for inciting the mob of supporters who attacked Congress on January 6 as part of his effort to disrupt the certification proceedings that day. And it details Trump’s effort to “exploit”—rather than halt—the attack, in the hope that the violence would create an excuse for delaying certification.”
Salon: “So What?”: Trump Shrugged Off Threat To Mike Pence’s Life, According To Latest Jack Smith Filing.
- “Prosecutors reconstructed interactions Trump had with his inner circle, including an episode where an aide rushed to the dining room to find Trump watching events of Jan. 6 unfold on TV while posting commentary on his phone. When the aide told Trump that security measures were being taken to protect Pence from the mob, ‘the defendant looked at him and said only, ‘So what?’ the filing alleges.”
Politico: 11 Damning Details In Jack Smith’s New Brief In The Trump Election Case.
- “Smith described a slew of conversations suggesting that the then-president knew his claims of election fraud were spurious. And Smith laid out evidence that Trump’s sole objective was to stay in power — not, as he and his lawyers have claimed, to exercise legitimate authority over election integrity.”
- “According to Smith’s prosecutors, Trump was alone in the White House dining room when he sent that tweet. Trump’s aides had left him there after failing to persuade him to call on his supporters to leave the Capitol.”
- “When Trump was told by an aide of Pence’s evacuation, prosecutors say Trump responded: ‘So what?’”
ABC News: Bombshell Immunity Filing Details Trump’s Alleged ‘Increasingly Desperate’ Bid To Overturn 2020 Election.
- “Special counsel Jack Smith has outlined new details of former President Donald Trump and his allies’ sweeping and ‘increasingly desperate’ efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, in a blockbuster court filing Wednesday aimed at defending Smith’s prosecution of Trump following the Supreme Court’s July immunity ruling. Trump intentionally lied to the public, state election officials, and his own vice president in an effort to cling to power after losing the election, while privately describing some of the claims of election fraud as ‘crazy,’ prosecutors alleged in the 165-page filing.”
- “‘When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office,’ the filing said. ‘With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost.’ When Trump’s effort to overturn the election through lawsuits and fraudulent electors failed to change the outcome of the election, prosecutors allege that the former president fomented violence, with prosecutors describing Trump as directly responsible for ‘the tinderbox that he purposely ignited on January 6.’”
NBC News: Trump ‘Resorted To Crimes’ To Stay In Office After 2020 Loss, Jack Smith’s Team Says.
- “Trump ‘resorted to crimes to try to stay in office’ after his loss, Smith’s team wrote in Wednesday’s filing, arguing that he launched “a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.”
- “Smith’s team once again argued that Trump knew his falsehoods about the 2020 election were, in fact, lies and said he relied upon his own campaign employees and volunteers, including his campaign manager, his deputy campaign manager, his senior campaign adviser and a campaign operative to carry out the alleged scheme. ‘Working with a team of private co-conspirators, the defendant acted as a candidate when he pursued multiple criminal means to disrupt, through fraud and deceit, the government function by which votes are collected and counted — a function in which the defendant, as President, had no official role,’ they wrote. Trump, Smith’s team said, was informed that election night results might be misleading because it would take a while to count mail-in ballots, which were expected to be favorable to Joe Biden. Trump, Smith’s team said, declared to his advisers that he ‘would simply declare victory before all the ballots were counted and a winner was projected’ and publicly began laying the groundwork by telling his supporters he’d lose only if there was fraud.”
The Washington Post: As Rioters Stormed Capitol With Pence Inside, Trump Allegedly Said ‘So What?’.
- “President Donald Trump appeared indifferent as rioters stormed the Capitol to try to prevent the transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021, telling an aide ‘So what?’ even after learning security measures were being taken to protect his vice president, prosecutors alleged in an explosive new court filing unsealed Wednesday.”
- “The filing is Smith’s most detailed explanation of how the conversations between Trump and his vice president are unofficial acts that can be prosecuted; legal experts have said the riskiest part of the superseding indictment was to include those conversations — because a president’s duties include talking to his vice president. The filing offers the most exhaustive account yet of Pence’s interactions with Trump, alleging that the vice president repeatedly tried to encourage Trump to back off his claims of a stolen election. It alleges that one of Trump’s lawyers repeatedly told Trump they could not substantiate any of his claims, nor could outside consultants they hired.”
BBC: Trump ‘Resorted To Crimes’ To Overturn 2020 Election, Prosecutors Say.
- “Mr Smith also provides several new details about the Trump campaign’s alleged role in sowing chaos in battleground states, where a large number of mail-in ballots were being counted in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the Democratic stronghold of Detroit, Michigan, when a large batch of ballots seemed to be in favour of Biden, a Trump campaign operative allegedly told his colleague to ‘find a reason’ that something was wrong with the ballots to give him ‘options to file litigation’.”
- “The filing also claims that Trump and his allies, including lawyer Rudy Giuliani, sought to ‘exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol’ on 6 January 2021 to delay the election certification. They allegedly did this by calling senators and leaving voicemails that asked them to object to the state electors.”
The Daily Beast: Trump Is Absolutely Fuming Over the Release of Bombshell Election Case Doc.
- “The unsealed documents in Trump’s election subversion case, made public by the presiding U.S. district judge Tanya Chutkan, is not a good look for Trump if the damning trove of allegations are to be believed. Included are Trump’s reaction to the news that his vice president, Mike Pence, had been safely moved to a secure location within the U.S. Capitol (‘So what?’) and how Trump allegedly told wife Melania and daughter Ivanka, ‘It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.’”
The Independent (UK): Trump Pursued ‘Multiple Criminal Means’ To Overturn Election, New Special Counsel Filing Claims.
- “Special counsel Jack Smith has outlined a sprawling criminal case against Donald Trump for his attempts to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election, detailing for the first time the former president’s ‘increasingly desperate efforts’ to cling to power with ‘knowingly false claims of election fraud.’ Trump intentionally lied to voters, election officials, and his own vice president Mike Pence in what amounted to a criminal effort to stay in office, culminating in his failure to stop a mob that tried to do it with violence, according to the document filed in federal court in Washington DC on Wednesday.”
TIME: Prosecutors: Trump ‘Resorted to Crimes’ After Losing Election.
- “The filing includes details of conversations between Trump and Pence, including a private lunch the two had on Nov. 12, 2020, in which Pence ‘reiterated a face-saving option’ for Trump, telling him, ‘don’t concede but recognize the process is over,’ according to prosecutors. But Trump ‘disregarded’ Pence ‘in the same way he disregarded dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected his and his allies’ legal claims, and that he disregarded officials in the targeted states — including those in his own party — who stated publicly that he had lost and that his specific fraud allegations were false,’ prosecutors wrote. Trump’s ‘steady stream of disinformation’ in the weeks after the election culminated in his speech at the Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, in which Trump ‘used these lies to inflame and motivate the large and angry crowd of his supporters to march to the Capitol and disrupt the certification proceeding,’ prosecutors wrote.”
Missouri Independent: Special Counsel Jack Smith Reveals New Evidence Against Trump In 2020 Election Case.
- “U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed a lengthy and partly redacted motion Wednesday that charts special counsel Jack Smith’s final argument before November that former President Donald Trump acted in a private capacity when he co-conspired to overturn the 2020 election. Much of the motion concerns Trump’s interactions with individuals in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as he sought to disrupt election results, Smith alleged.”
The New York Times: Four Takeaways From Jack Smith’s Brief in the Trump Election Case.
- “Mr. Trump posted to Twitter that Mr. Pence had lacked the ‘courage’ to do what was right. The mob became enraged at the vice president, and the Secret Service took him to a secure location. An aide to Mr. Trump rushed in to alert him to the peril Mr. Pence was in, but Mr. Trump looked at the aide and said only, ‘So what?’ according to the brief.”
- “Mr. Trump has continued to make baseless accusations about election fraud in 2020. At the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday night, his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, was asked directly if Mr. Trump had lost four years ago. Mr. Vance dodged. ‘I’m focused on the future,’ he said.”
The Washington Post: 5 Takeaways From The Big New Filing On Trump’s 2020 Election Plot.
- “We just got the most extensive new detail in years about former president Donald Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election, in the form of a much-anticipated filing from special counsel Jack Smith. The 165-page partially redacted filing, which was unsealed by U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, lays out the evidence Smith’s team would like to present in the long-delayed Jan. 6 federal criminal case against Trump. What evidence Smith can use and what charges can stand are disputed after the Supreme Court recently gave presidents including Trump extensive immunity from criminal prosecution.”